Gateway recap

After Operation Olympic secures the Collector at enormous cost, Joe Bishop recovers Skippy and follows the device to Vortex 37, an Elder weapon that rejects Skippy and traps Frey. Joe recovers the damaged Unit 52 and transfers Nagatha into its matrix. Nagatha survives, establishes contact with the Vortex, and reveals that Frey has been held alive in stasis. Task Force Black transports the Vortex to the real Gateway after exposing a heavily guarded decoy. Reed destroys the field generator containing its wave, allowing the Vortex to destroy the Gateway and the active Outsider. Nagatha saves Valkyrie from the blast, and Joe sacrifices the evacuated carrier Bukhan to escape the disrupted region. The apparent victory is incomplete: Skippy finds relay images showing that two Outsider ships entered the galaxy before the Gateway was destroyed.

Previously: Joe Bishop and the Elder AI Skippy have continued their partnership against threats to humanity. Joe commands Task Force Black from Valkyrie, with Reed as the ship's captain and Bilby as its AI. Their struggle with the Maxolhx has also drawn in Rindhalu forces. The latest operation is meant to secure a device called the Collector while keeping its true importance hidden from the enemy.

Operation Olympic ends with severe losses. Star Force gets the Collector aboard Valkyrie, but Outsider malware disrupts the escape and sends Skippy's canister toward the system's star. Flying Dutchman and all three assault carriers are lost, while scattered survivors remain under threat on the planet. David Chica's group captures a Maxolhx transport and helps recover other personnel. Perkins and Derek Bonsu escape Flying Dutchman's destruction, and Frey's Star Team Razor relieves trapped troops before rescuing the sole survivor of two other Star Teams. Task Force Hammer completes the evacuation, but the Rindhalu force withdraws its support. Joe refuses to abandon the search for Skippy. He and Bilby deduce that Skippy used the momentum exchange that saved Valkyrie to propel himself away from the star. Stealth drones locate him, and Valkyrie recovers his canister. Skippy confirms that he concealed his escape to preserve the Outsider's belief that he was lost. The Collector is now available for study, and a backup of Nagatha also survives inside Skippy, although she has no compatible matrix in which to awaken.

Skippy's survival remains secret so the Maxolhx will continue guarding the system where they believe he was lost. Activating the Collector reveals the kind of starlight it was designed to absorb, but also coincides with an ambush by cruisers that can track Valkyrie through repeated jumps. Joe identifies an unexplained drain in Reactor 3, and venting its core removes a coherent-energy spark that had been transmitting the ship's position. Valkyrie escapes but needs extensive repairs. Initial searches find no star matching the Collector's signature. Joe takes the damaged ship through a blockade and heads for a concealed Maxolhx shipyard, while also stealing a star carrier later named Lafayette. He brings the carrier and Skippy to Scorandum, who obtains deniable political support for an operation intended to distract the Maxolhx. Scorandum also forces the Inquisitors to release and publicly clear Kinsta. As the covert provocation begins, Joe realizes that a star's history may have altered its spectrum. A revised search produces twelve possible origins for the Collector, with four leading candidates.

Valkyrie searches the candidate systems and finds Vortex 37 near an unusual red dwarf. The independent Elder construct is an incomplete anti-Outsider weapon that will burn out after firing and requires an Elder AI in its central interface. Frey carries Skippy into the hub, but the Vortex rejects him as contaminated, seals Frey inside, and ejects his canister at extreme speed. Valkyrie uses precision jumps, shields, and railgun darts to slow and recover Skippy while Frey's oxygen runs down. Skippy cannot persuade the Vortex to release her, and a plan to penetrate its defenses with captured malware fails. Frey is believed to die when her oxygen is exhausted. Major Carell Holmquist takes command of Star Team Razor. Reed keeps the grieving Joe focused on stopping the Outsider and directs Valkyrie to Jaguar for repairs. With Vortex 37 no longer usable through Skippy, Joe and Skippy shift to finding and destroying the array being used to build the Outsider's route into the galaxy.

At Jaguar, Margaret Adams prompts Joe to reconsider whether every Elder AI on Skippy's records is truly dead. A memory search through two AIs stolen from a Maxolhx museum identifies Unit 52, a hostile Elder AI that fell into the Lundervik star and escaped both the ancient reset and Skippy's later kill command. A battle group under Admiral Samard supports the operation. Coordinated neutrino scans find Unit 52 above the stellar core. Joe then has Skippy reopen a wormhole endpoint inside the star, extracting the canister while destroying that wormhole route. Unit 52 is alive, but most of its executive functions are irreversibly gone even though nearly all of its matrix remains intact. Joe realizes that Nagatha, a stable submind created by Skippy, might be able to grow into the empty portions of the recovered matrix. Unit 52 has therefore changed from a potential ally into a possible body for Nagatha, though the transfer would be dangerous and its outcome uncertain.

Joe orders Nagatha's irreversible transfer into Unit 52 because she cannot be awakened elsewhere to give consent. During the isolated experiment, signs of activity lead Skippy to wipe the carrier craft's systems and let it fall toward a star. Joe recognizes Nagatha's Morse-code signal, dives after the craft, and retrieves her canister during a rescue that nearly kills him and the Panther crew. Nagatha awakens as herself inside Unit 52's matrix. She is not a master-control AI like Skippy, but she can gradually use the matrix's Elder functions and volunteers to approach Vortex 37. When Nagatha makes contact, the Vortex opens and Frey speaks from inside. She did not die. A stasis field activated around her, so only minutes passed from her perspective while weeks elapsed outside. Frey installs Nagatha in the interface, and the Vortex accepts her as a counterpart rather than a controller. Frey returns to Valkyrie alive while Nagatha remains inside to establish trust and determine whether Vortex 37 will help oppose the Outsider.

Nagatha learns that activating the wider Vortex network would permanently disable wormhole systems across much of the galaxy, making the original defense plan unacceptable. The search for the Outsider's array also appears impossibly broad. Intelligence then leads Valkyrie to a huge ring structure guarded by more than three hundred Maxolhx ships. Joe considers a suicidal attack, but further observation lets Skippy identify the structure as a decoy intended to destroy Valkyrie or waste its time. Valkyrie attacks the perimeter and leaves false jump trails to keep the defenders occupied. Meanwhile, the covert revolt encouraged by Scorandum's operation expands within the Maxolhx coalition. Skippy briefly disables Valkyrie's jump drive when Joe refuses to let him become protector of the rebelling client species. Nagatha identifies his despair over their failure to stop the Outsider and urges Joe to revisit the Vortex. She determines that Vortex 37 can be transported and fired at reduced power, limiting its destructive range to roughly three light-hours while shielding Valkyrie. The plan now depends on locating the real Gateway and bringing the Vortex close enough to destroy it.

Joe uses the dormant Outsider kernel hidden in Valkyrie's reactor as a beacon. The Outsider destroys the remote drone carrying it, but Skippy obtains the real Gateway's location. Task Force Black departs with Valkyrie, Yellowstone, Bukhan, Lafayette, and Vortex 37. The Gateway's disruption field forces a direct jump into a small inner bubble. Structural damage makes Lafayette take over hauling the Vortex, while Valkyrie reduces its complement to 31 volunteers. The Vortex activates after the final jump, but an Outsider field contains its wave. Reed fires Elder weapons at the active generator, releasing the wave to destroy the Gateway, the active Outsider, and the forming construct beyond it. Nagatha reshapes the shield to save Valkyrie. The burned-out Vortex leaves the ship stranded in distorted space, with a lethal emergence due within days. Joe devises an assisted jump through an inbound wormhole generated by Bukhan. Nagatha pilots the evacuated carrier remotely, and its sacrifice allows Valkyrie to escape. Skippy then finds an Outsider relay feed. Images show that two Outsider ships passed through the Gateway days before its destruction, leaving their whereabouts and purpose unknown.

Nagatha, operating through Unit 52's matrix, enables Task Force Black to use Vortex 37 against the real Gateway. Reed's Elder-weapon strike destroys the generator containing the Vortex wave, which then annihilates the Gateway, the active Outsider, and a forming construct. Nagatha reshapes the shield to save Valkyrie, but the ship is stranded in disrupted space with a lethal Vortex emergence approaching. Joe devises an assisted jump using an inbound wormhole from Bukhan. The carrier is evacuated and sacrificed, while Valkyrie and its 31-person strike crew escape. Frey has already been recovered alive from Vortex stasis, and Joe, Reed, Skippy, Bilby, and Nagatha all survive. Jaguar remains environmentally damaged, and the Maxolhx coalition is destabilized by its client revolt. The immediate enemy is gone, but relay images prove that two Outsider ships crossed through the Gateway before its destruction. Their locations and intentions are unknown.